


a few inches off, and you'd have hit my heart

by Cumberbatch Critter (ivelostmyspectacles)



Category: Houdini & Doyle (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7571017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/Cumberbatch%20Critter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry watches Doyle get shot.</p>
<p>He watches Doyle get shot, and Harry knows true panic.</p>
<p>[[Compliant for 1x10.]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	a few inches off, and you'd have hit my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Because I wanted to be in Harry Houdini's head for this heart-wrenching moment? Yeah, sure. T_T
> 
> I do not own _Houdini and Doyle_. Thanks for reading!

They had accomplished what they had set out to do. They had accomplished what they had set out to do, but the electric buzz of adrenalin and excitement had drained, replaced with only a cold dread that had shot to his lips with a yelled _"Doyle!"_ as he had run for the stairs.

He had heard the gunshot, had watched Doyle go down in his own haste to protect the President. And for a long moment, he'd been frozen. It couldn't have been more than a second in reality, but it felt like time had been suspended, and all he could think was _no no no no no no no_ over and over again. And then he had started running.

It had been Benjamin all along. Suddenly Adelaide's problems with her husband didn't seem to matter, no matter how it had felt like someone had taken his heart and _twisted_ when she had said that he was still alive. Now it was all asinine; Doyle was pressed back against the decorative railing and Benjamin was pointing a gun at him. Whatever Adelaide had told them about Benjamin being a good man was not relative. Houdini knew that he would shoot the doctor, and then turn his sights back on the purpose of his visit before they could so much as blink.

And Houdini couldn't do a thing about it.

He hadn't been able to save Ma; he wasn't going to be able to save Doyle.

Saving a stranger suddenly (selfishly) seemed so unimportant when he couldn't even protect the ones he lo-

Another gunshot. Harry lurched to a stop, clammy fingers seizing around the banister. There was another one of those oddly suspended moments, and briefly he thought his knees were going to buckle. And then he saw Benjamin jerk and fall, and _Adelaide_ was the one left holding the smoking gun.

He would process that later.

He swallowed his heart down from his throat and continued up the stairs two at a time. It was hard to focus past the uproar of the terrified crowd in the distance and the blood pulsing in his ears.

Adelaide got to him first, on the floor, hand on his knee, saying his name. Houdini didn't spare her a glance just then, folding down on Doyle's opposite side, prying his fingers away from the wound only so he could see. It was a lot of blood. His mind went blank. What did he do? What did he say? Were there cops? Surely there was a doctor on stand-by. Except Doyle _was_ the doctor, the only one Houdini knew of, and he was laid out and gasping in pain and clearly _not_ okay, no matter what he said or did or tried to fake.

_Shit._

Adelaide had gone over to Benjamin. Words were filtering through from their hushed conversation, words that Harry didn't want to hear. There was blood on his hands from Doyle's jacket. He clapped his hand onto Doyle's shoulder, fingers digging into muscle and bone, and tried to force his tongue to ask _"what do we do?"_. He couldn't get the words out, throat too tight, breath wheezing through parted lips as though he had sustained the gunshot himself. And he wished he would have. He wished he would have.

_Please God don't take another one away from me please don't take him away from me I need him Adelaide needs him Touie and Kingsley and Mary need him please don't take another person from my- our lives please_

Doyle broke the unending silence. "I think I underestimated my wound," he said, and the way his voice sounded was a stark contrast to the smile that blossomed across his face.

Houdini wanted to grin in response. He couldn't manage it. But he could find his words, his mechanisms, and finally he could respond to what was happening. "Oh, come on," he said lightly. "I've lost more blood than that shaving."

There was commotion from around the corner and his attention was jerked away from his barely there teasing. "This way!" he shouted, and looked back at the doctor in time to see the wince turn to a carefully calculated lack of emotion. The cops went to Benjamin first. (That was probably fair. They probably didn't know what had happened, if they hadn't seen it firsthand.) But Benjamin was a lost cause - had been right from the beginning. He'd lied to Adelaide, he'd faked his death, he'd had the _audacity_ to step back into her life only to destroy it in this way. He'd try to assassinate the President; he had shot Arthur Conan Doyle instead. "Forget him!" he snapped. "Over here! _Now!_ "

He turned back to Doyle, squeezing his shoulder. The doctor's eyes were drooping, each blink lasting longer than the last. And the _blood_ \- He needed to keep him awake. "Doc. They're gonna give you a medal." He dug his thumb in a little. "You don't wanna be dead for that." But the laboured breathing beneath his fingers, Doyle's eyes rolling back in his head- no, no. Doc!" Doyle's head dropped off to the side, and Harry's eyes widened, shoving at the doctor's shoulder. No delirious smile was forthcoming; no uttered breath of reassurance.

Not this, not _this_.

Harry snapped his gaze to the cops. "Well, do something!" he demanded, as though he expected the cops to be doctors, extract the bullet and stop the bleeding, sew him up and keep him _alive_. ( _Stay alive!_ ) They were just cops. But surely they could do _something_!

"Anything..." He sucked in a breath through his teeth and jerked his bloodied hands from Doyle's shoulder. The doctor's hands had fallen from his stomach and fumbled jerked his own jacket off, crumbling it up to press hard against Doyle's stomach. It elicited no response. "Get help!" he snapped at the cops, at Adelaide, at anybody would who listen. "Let him die and so help me-" _I'll fall apart and I can't do that again._ "Somebody's going to face the consequences!"

He'd lost Ma. He had thought he had lost Adelaide to Benjamin. Hell, he might even be losing his mind. He couldn't lose Doyle, too. The universe _could not_ take everything he ever cared about. His family, his friends. It couldn't, not like _this_.

"Come on, Doyle," he muttered, and this time, there was only barely concealed panic in his voice. "Come on, stay with me."

_Stay with me, just stay with me, please, Doyle,_ please _..._

He had to be okay. He had to be okay, or the rest of them, he suspected with abject fear, would never be okay again.

 


End file.
